Interviewee Name: China Gorman, CEO
Company Name: CMG Group
Website: http://chinagorman.com
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
China Gorman: I think of myself as a business leader. I’ve spent the last 30 years of my career in the human capital management space, mostly as a leader of consulting services businesses at the local, regional, national and global levels that provide services to organizations so that they are operated more effectively as it relates to their people management strategy and behaviours. So I run businesses that support HR in helping their businesses be more effective.
Avil Beckford: What’s a typical day like for you?
China Gorman: Today, I’m in a one-person consulting business as I’m reviewing opportunities to go back into the corporate world as a business leader. I get up early and I work out which is a luxury I generally do not have when I’m working in a corporate position because I’m on the road all the time. I spend a lot of my time reading, talking to people, giving speeches, keynote addresses at conferences. I am keeping current with research in the field and I’m starting to do a little bit of consulting with companies that are really interested in looking at the connections between the organization culture, its leadership behaviour, management philosophy, and engagement of employees.
Avil Beckford: How do you motivate yourself and stay motivated?
China Gorman: I think by being what a colleague of mine once called a “student of the game,” never assuming that I know it all. So that means that I have constantly got to be spanning the horizon of research, business writing of what’s happening in the space, in blogs, in the world of publishing to keep current. It’s a constant quest for what’s new, what’s current, is what really keeps me going.
Avil Beckford: If you had to start over from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you do differently?
China Gorman: That’s such a great question and I don’t think I would do a lot that differently because my career so far has just been amazingly wonderful. One thing I didn’t do, and I let circumstances prevent it, was not to finish my Masters Degree. When I was in my thirties, I was working for an organization when I was transferred, at one point every 18 months. I was in one location and finished all the course work for an MS in Organizational Development and was just getting started on my thesis when I got transferred. It was a very challenging new assignment, and I let it slip and I never went back to it. If I were going to do it all over again I would have persisted and finished the Masters Degree. I don’t think that not having it has been a problem but it just feels like an unfinished thing.
Avil Beckford: What's the most important business or other discovery you've made in the past year?
China Gorman: I think what everybody is discovering these days, is the power of the social web, both on a personal and on a business level. It’s not just about watching kiddies’ videos on YouTube anymore, and it’s also not watching behind-the-scenes bad behaviour in a pizza restaurant, it’s really harnessing the collective of the crowd for good, and sometimes for not good. I’ve really been interested in participating in and discovering the power of social media.
Avil Beckford: What are the three threats to your business, your success, and how are you handling them?
China Gorman: I have two things going on right now. One is generating speaking and consulting opportunities and the other is trying to identify the next business leadership role, back in the business world to become part of an organization. Some potential threats are:
- Lack of visibility: You cannot be in front of everybody whenever they have the need for a new president or CEO or Chief Operating Officer, or when they need someone to come in and work with their senior team. You can’t be in front of everybody all the time, so what I’m doing about that is, like you, I have a blog and I do public speaking, I attend conferences. So lack of visibility would be one threat.
- My focus in consulting business is providing strategic support and motivation within organizations that really need to engage with their workforce. I think one of the barriers to that is that other than my first three years out of college, I’ve never been an HR person. I’ve always been a business leader. I’ve always been the bringer of solutions and so in some cases, the very people that I’m talking with, and supporting are HR people, and it could, although I haven’t seen it yet, be a hurdle that I have never been an HR leader. I’m dealing with that by spending lots and lots of time with HR leaders, in-person, on the phone, virtually through the social web to continue to understand as I have throughout my career, and specifically when I was the Chief Operating Officer at the Society for Human Resource Management to understand what their issues are.
- Because I haven’t been a Chief HR Officer it’s important that I know how it is to walk in their shoes, what the issues are, and how they are changing and what the pressures are and creating those relationships continues to be really important.
Avil Beckford: What’s unique about the service that you provide?
China Gorman: The unique thing is that it’s me! The service that I provide now is public speaking and consulting with organizations and what I’m selling is me. There isn’t another China Gorman out there, some people would say, “Thank God,” but I think a lot of people would say, “That’s not such a bad thing,” but that’s a unique thing. I’m not Marshall Goldsmith, Tony Hsieh, I’m China Gorman. That’s the unique thing and that’s what you get when you engage with me.
Avil Beckford: Describe a major business or other challenge you had and how you resolved it. What kind of lessons did you learn in the process?
China Gorman: I was promoted into leadership roles at a very young age. And the biggest challenge that I have had in my professional life was being very young in positions of authority and responsibility. People are sometimes surprised at age and not gender, but I think because I was blessed with being my mother’s daughter, and have always looked younger than my age, the real issue for me has always been, “Gee she is too young to be in this position.” The issue of gender was not the issue, the issue was what does this kid know? How can this kid possibly be my boss? How can this kid have the answer to my systemic organizational problem?
What’s been interesting to me is that it’s only been in the last couple of years frankly, three or four, that I have felt like I have been dealing with any kind of gender bias in the workplace. Because in the earlier days of my career in handling the issue of how can someone so young be in this position, I was also simultaneously handling the gender issue. In either case, the question isn’t how can someone so young be in this position or how can a girl be in this position, it’s really one of what do you know, how can you help me, and can I trust you? In answering those questions and presenting myself as someone who has the expertise, experience and can absolutely help you, the gender and age issue went away, and all the other issues.
For example, when I was in Texas, I was a young leader, and also I was seen as a Yankee. Or when I was running a global organization and I was in France, then I was an American. The biggest thing I’ve had to deal with for the longest period of time was really an age bias as opposed to any of the others.
Avil Beckford: Tell me about your big break and who gave you.
China Gorman: A huge break came when I was just turning 30, and I had been in the consulting business, the outplacement or career consulting business for several years. I had just done a branch office start-up that was in place and running for about a year successfully when the leader in their second largest operation (Dallas) in the organization was terminated amidst ethical and integrity kinds of issues. It was a very large staff of professional consultants and operation support people.
It had previously been the most successful operation from a profitability standpoint of the organization and the morale was down the tube. All the staff had one foot out the door and before my boss could call me and say, “We really want you to go to Dallas and work on that situation,” I called my boss and said, “Look, if you’re thinking that, please don’t. This business here in Kansa City is just getting off the ground, it’s very successful, but if you pull me out and take me to Dallas, we could potentially do damage to two operations. I love Kansas City and I’d love to stay.” He said, “Absolutely, I totally agree with you. We would never do that.”
Three weeks later he called me and said, “Get on a plane you are the new general manager of the Dallas operation. There is a big marketing event in the morning and you have to be there. I will be announcing you as the new manager.”
Now, I was very young. I was only 30. It never occurred to me to say, “Wait a minute, we discussed this, this isn’t a good idea, I don’t want to go.” It never occurred to me to say that even though that was the truth. I loved Kansas City and I had questions about being in the south and those sorts of things but I got on the plane and I went and did the marketing event the next day and met the staff. Interestingly, everyone on the staff, including all the operations and administration people, everyone on that staff was older than I was. When I walked in after the marketing event to meet my new team, to say that they were hostile and looked askance at me, would be a gross understatement.
Rather than seeing this as some kind of karmic punishment, I only saw it as an opportunity, and in fact looking back, it really was my big break. About a year into it, the issues that we uncovered as we started to bring healing to that operation and continue to grow it, the issues were wide and deep. And it was an incredible leadership crucible for me, and I learned how to be a leader in those two-and-a-half years that I was general manager of that operation, having to re-engage and re-enrol every single person on that team, having to go back out into the marketplace recapture longstanding accounts that we had lost as well as lead the sales effort to continue to bring in accounts that the business would continue growing.
I think about halfway through I thought to myself on a couple of occasions, “Boy if I’d really known what was here, I would not have come.” I really would not have come, which would have really been too bad because I learned so much. A very difficult opportunity turned into my big break because it taught me how to lead, how to lead from behind, servant leadership if you will. The only way a 30 year old was going to be successful leading a group of PhD’s and 30-year tenured professional consultants was by creating a team and engaging them in a larger vision.
It turned into a very successful operation. We grew by leaps and bounds, we opened satellite offices, we won awards, not just for sales growth and profitability, but for quality – the team was featured in a Fortune magazine article. It was a textbook sort of turnaround situation that we all accomplished together, it wasn’t me, but rather it was the team pulling together. I always think of that as my big break as a leader because I really learned how to lead when all the chips were down.
Avil Beckford: Describe one of your biggest failures. What lessons did you learn, and how did it contribute to a greater success?
China Gorman: I have always known as a leader in a services business, particularly in a professional service business, and I think this goes to every kind of business, your success depends on your team, whether your team is 1,500 people around the world as it was in one instance, or whether it was four people in a start-up, or everything in between, it all relates to the people. I have always spent a lot of my time and energy ensuring that we have the right people in the right jobs and they have what they need, and that they are developing in a way that is in alignment with their personal mission and values and with the organization’s mission, values and needs.
In one situation years ago I promoted someone to a leadership role, and I knew it was a bit of a risk perhaps from emotional maturity perspective that he might not have been ready, but he was so smart, so willing, and worked so hard that I thought we could overcome any of those deficits. For a time it was a good fit, the learning curve was steep but it was appropriate and I think the performance pressure got to him and things started to unravel. I just redoubled my efforts to provide outside support and I continued to invest time and energy in trying to turn that sort of square peg into a round hole depriving other parts of the organization and other parts of my responsibility of my time and energy.
I stuck with it way longer than I should. The failure was I went against my doubt. This individual was not ready to assume a much bigger leadership role and it did damage to him and his career, it did damage to our organization because I just stuck to it and thought we can get this done and it was more painful for everyone much longer than it should have been. So that was a good lesson. When you realize that you have made a mistake even when you have everyone’s best interest at heart, and it was an honest mistake, you have to step up and rectify the situation quickly and certainly that feels like a pretty big failure to me.
Avil Beckford: What’s one of the toughest decisions you’ve had to make and how did it impact your life?
China Gorman: When you are a leader and you have people’s careers in your hands that’s a huge responsibility. Years ago in another situation, when I was promoted, I promoted someone behind me, and then I was promoted again so that person was no longer reporting to me. He was reporting to someone who reported to me. There was something going on with this individual, and the whole organization was in a difficult economic dynamics of the business, and this person was leading an organization in a part of the country that was particularly challenged from the economics of our business and business model.
He just wasn’t stepping up, and I worked with his manager to provide some suggestions on how to motivate and support him. I spoke with the individual; we had become good friends, and said, “This isn’t looking good. Here are some ways that you can strengthen.” Nothing happened so I finally approved the decision to make a change and terminate his employment. It was so difficult, that decision was so difficult.
What followed for about nine months was the most difficult time in my leadership career on a personal level because his wife called me fairly frequently to tell me tearfully what his situation was. He wasn’t finding a job, how could the organization turn its back on him, and he never knew that she was calling. It was a very difficult time, I felt like we’d made the right decision, and I felt he’d been given lots of opportunities to improve and correct. He’d gotten coaching from his boss and from me and yet I knew him and had great affection for him, and knew that I was impacting a family. It was unusual that the spouse would feel comfortable to make those calls late at night, calling from the basement, calling from the car. That was really a difficult time in the aftermath of a really difficult decision that didn’t get any better for quite some time.
Avil Beckford: What are three events that helped to shape your life?
China Gorman:
- I grew up in a very small town with an education system that was falling apart. When I was a junior in high school my grandparents made it possible for me to attend a boarding school far from home. It was a church school and my grandparents didn’t live far away so I wasn’t cut off from my family. But going away to boarding school when I was junior in high school absolutely changed how I looked at the world. It changed my life, learning to be self-sufficient, learning to be self-motivating, learning to be independent at age 15 instead of 17 when you go off to college. I grew up quickly, not in a bad way, in a really good way.
- Being a partner in a start-up, a small consulting firm, when I was in my mid-twenties. A much more senior fellow and I worked together to create a consulting business that took off. The saying that it’s always better to be lucky than good, we were both good but our timing was even better because of the economy. Our business started off in the black in month one and just continued that way. That was an incredibly powerful learning and leadership experience for me.
- The experience of moving to the Dallas operation, engaging the team to turnaround the performance and really move that business forward I think was also another life shaping or leadership shaping experience. It was about leadership and I personally brought in some of the biggest sales in that organization’s history and managed those very complex relationships that were national that turned into international.
These three events set the stage for some of the other wonderful things that happened in my career and life.
Avil Beckford: What’s an accomplishment that you are proudest of?
China Gorman: I think the success that my organization experienced when I was the president of Lee Hecht Harrison – Chief Operating Officer for two years and then Global President for two years was a difficult time in the economy. We had a lot of catching up to do from a products and services perspectives, we were integrating a number of acquisitions into the business, so retaining our best talent, moving the business forward, our impact forward, our visibility forward through an incredible group of people.
I think that’s one of the accomplishments that I am proudest of. But I have to hasten to say that it’s not like I did it on my own, the team was incredible and keeping that team engaged, retaining that talent when they all had other options all the time and our competitors were always trying to poach our regular talent away. Keeping that team intact and moving forward was really exciting and watching and supporting their success was one of the things I am proudest of.
Avil Beckford: How did mentors influence your life?
China Gorman: All my mentors were ad hoc. The organizations that I was a part of until I became a significant leader were medium sized firms so they didn’t have very robust HR departments so things like mentor programs and those kinds of things were just not available to me. But I watched, I was smart and I watched, so I’ve learned both what to do and what not to do based on the leadership example that I had in front of me.
Some CEOs I would learn what to do and also what not to do and some of my immediate bosses I would think to myself, “When I’m in that position I’m not going to so that, or that was brilliant, the way he managed me through that situation, I have to remember to be able to do that, when I’m in that position.”
While I don’t think I had anybody who would think that they were my mentor, I’ve had lots of them but it was more through observation than formal relationships.
Avil Beckford: An invisible mentor is a unique leader you can learn things from by observing them from afar, in the capacity of an Invisible Mentor, what is one piece of advice that you would give to readers?
China Gorman: The thing that I observed the most was “Gee I don’t want to be like that when I’m in charge,” to say it in a positive way is to always be authentically you. I have observed over the years that senior leaders whether it be the CEO or some other, you can be with them in a social setting, dinner or drinks after work, or something like that and you have a really warm relationship, and when you see them in the morning and we are back at work, they are this other persona, the CEO persona, or the Executive Vice President persona, acting the way they think a CEO or EVP is supposed to act. I always found that non-motivating and made me question who was the real persona and it brought into question “So who do I trust? Do I trust you when you’re friend? Or do I trust you when you’re the boss?”
My message is, and I try to model this behaviour, your values are your values, personally and professionally. Your behaviour should be congruent with those values whether you are a friend with someone or you are their boss, or the ultimate leader of the organization. The message is, don’t have a collection of personas that you whip out depending on your surroundings and depending on what task is at hand. Trust yourself and your team to be your real YOU all the time.
As a leader, there are times you have to make difficult decisions and so you put your game face on. There are times when you really want to be empathetic and engaging and so you do that. It needs to be all from the authentic you, not from the president persona. When I’m at work, and something else at another time it confuses people and it makes them not really trust who is the real you and it diminishes your ability to be transparent, which is a critical leadership behaviour particularly these days.